Peer mentors get a new home at Cloonan

Published 10:07 pm, Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Kim Lang, 12, Priya Gada, 13, and Claire Howlett, 13, clear shelves in a storage closet as Luke Dawson, 12, stands by as students at Cloonan Middle School clean up an old art room to make way for a student lounge for a new peer mentoring group at the school. Eighth graders in the group will help sixth graders adjust to middle school and adolescence in Stamford , Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 9 2010. less

Kim Lang, 12, Priya Gada, 13, and Claire Howlett, 13, clear shelves in a storage closet as Luke Dawson, 12, stands by as students at Cloonan Middle School clean up an old art room to make way for a student ... more

Students at Cloonan Middle School clean up an old art room to make way for a student lounge for a new peer mentoring group at the school. Eighth graders in the group will help sixth graders adjust to middle school and adolescence in Stamford , Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 9 2010. less

Students at Cloonan Middle School clean up an old art room to make way for a student lounge for a new peer mentoring group at the school. Eighth graders in the group will help sixth graders adjust to middle ... more

STAMFORD -- As dusty art supplies and projects filled garbage cans Tuesday afternoon, an art room at Cloonan Middle School began its transformation into a leadership lounge, the future home to a peer mentoring program.

"It's all the students' ceramics. They didn't come back and get them," said Mackenzie Eisen, an eighth-grader and peer mentor, as she stuffed an uneven vessel into a garbage can overflowing with books, paper and other items pulled from a shelf.

Like more than a dozen other eighth- and seventh-graders -- peer mentors and peer mentors in training -- Mackenzie arrived after school for the clean up.

"It gives them a place to call home," said Assistant Principal Laureen Mody.

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The lounge is also expected to become home to a peer mediation and another program, she said.

The mentors offer sixth-grade students the benefits of their academic, social and emotional experience. Mackenzie said she met the first student she mentored in the hallway last year, when she saw the younger girl crying. While comforting her, Mackenzie learned some girls were being mean to her, so she spoke with them.

"I like making a difference, knowing that little things that I do make a difference," she said. "A lot of kids want to make a difference, but they don't know where to start."

Asked about advice she wished she had been given in sixth grade, Mackenzie didn't hesitate.

"How to be organized, stay organized and get to class on time," she said.

The nonprofit College For Every Student provides training for mentors, Mody said. Barry Halpin, a prevention specialist with Liberation Programs, works with them every Tuesday morning. Halpin helped organize an assembly earlier in October where the eighth-graders recruited seventh-grade mentors-in-training. More than 100 students are now involved in the program.

When eighth-grader Claire Howlett found the student she was advising needed more help with school work than she could give during the 15-minute homeroom period, she arranged to meet him after school once a week for an hour or two.

"He just got his second report card, and no Ds," she said.

Students are more inclined to take advice seriously from someone close to their own age, rather than an adult, Claire said.

"That's what a mentor is -- a responsible friend," she said.

Staff Writer Wynne Parry can be reached at 203-964-2263 or wynne.parry@scni.com.